We are planning on returning to Columbia in February to create our next cross-cultural acrobatic stilt collaboration with Nemcatacoa Teatro: “Dios de Adrenalina”, which will be presented at the Iberoamericano Festival in April. For this to happen, we need your help! Please, visit our Indie GoGo page, be one of our generous contributor and get one of our very special rewards! Anything helps and all donations are tax deductable. Follow this link… click here to support this project

Our Story

“Dios de Adrenalina” is a cross cultural collaboration street theater project featuring acrobatic stiltwalking and live music from two US American and two Colombian companies. The Carpetbag Brigade Physical Theater Company from San Francisco, CA and Nemcatacoa Teatro from Bogota, Colombia, each specialize in creating live site-flexible street performances featuring the unique art of acrobatic stiltwalking. Verbo Bala is a VJ/DJ/Spoken word collective from Tucson, AZ and Hojarascafrom Carmen de Viboral, Colombia is trio that composes contemporary music with traditional Andean instruments.

In 2010 Carpetbag Brigade Director Jay Ruby and Nemcatacoa Director Nico Cifuentes began to plan a collaboration between their two companies. In 2011 the two companies spent three weeks together exchanging techniques and styles and discussing the issues that connected and divided their cultures. In 2012 the companies are invited to present a collaborative performance at the Iberoamericano Festival in Bogota, Colombia. To assist in creating the musical texture of the live performance the companies have invited Verbo Bala to work as DJ’s and bilingual spoken word artists as well as Hojarasca to compose musical textures for the performance.

“Dios de Adrenalina” – A Poetic Thesis Of Trauma

Adrenaline is the source of the fight or flight response in humans. It is regulated by the adrenal glands and impacts the interpretation of our perceptions and thus influences our relationship to reality. When the adrenal system creates a sense of trauma, we respond to reality in a traumatic manner. In this way, the metabolic level of the body influences social relations between individuals and cultures.

Violence and drugs are some of the most common and potent causes of imbalances in the adrenal system, and they exist together in a perpetual shadow economy. The economy of weapons and narco-trafficking is a constant link between the USA and Colombia, and this commerce defines the relationship between the two countries. The adrenaline created by this business continually affects communities in both nations with devastating results.

Who is the god of adrenaline that fuels a path of mutual destruction?
What are the pathways to readjust this systemic overdose of adrenaline?
How do we address the continuing cycles of anger, trauma and ignorance?
These are the questions that underlie the Dios de la Adrenalina project.

Verbo-bala (Tucson, Arizona) and Hojorasca (Carmen de Viborral, Colombia) are conducting the musical research for the project. Verbo-bala is a multi-media collective that will provide live music, video projections and bilingual spoken word narrative. Hojorasca is an experimental acoustic musical group evolving the art of traditional Andean music. The musical groups will each create their own scores and collaborate on mixed tracks for the project, as well as perform live with the performance.

Project Origins & History

The Carpetbag Brigade and Nemcatacoa saw each another’s work at the 2005 Al Aire Puro Festival in Bogota, Colombia. In 2010, Jay Ruby and Nicolas Cifuentes worked together in The Carpetbag Brigade’s Stiltasana seminar in San Francisco, California. During this time they recognized the common seeds in each other’s work—influences of David Clarkson’s Stalker Theatre, and the Odin Teatret. Curiosity about the different aesthetics and trainings of their companies lead to a laboratory project proposal in which the companies would spend three weeks doing research together, sharing techniques of training, and composing creative material. The companies were able to realize this laboratory in July and August of 2011 through self-raised funds on Kickstarter, the support of the US Embassy, the support of the El Gesto Noble Festival, Teatro Tespys, and La Casa de la Cultura del Carmen de Viboral.

Documentation of this process from Adam Cooper Terán, video specialist, is available at the following links and a DVD can be sent if you wish for hard copy.

We are examining the shadow economies of guns and drugs through the mediums of acrobatic stiltwalking, spoken word and music. We are confronting our selves as points of contact between the borders of different cultures and different histories to create a powerful experience that seeks to unveil the distance and distinctions between our countries and cultures. We want to create a tapestry of action that is a testimony to the impact of gun and drug induced adrenaline on the autonomic nervous system. We want to retrace the echoes of those collective and personal traumas in order to redress the ignorance and fear that exists as a wall between stereotyped images of one another and transform it into an atmosphere of respect and love through the sharing of public performance.

Our immediate goal for the winter of 2012 is to storyboard an early version of the performance so that we can present it at the Iberoamericano Festival in Bogota and use the success of that endeavor to create support and further opportunities for development and presentation.

What We Need & What You Get

Our Indie Go Go goal is $7777 by February 14th….
We will be 18 people working together in a small village in Colombia.
We are planning a cost effective research time from the beginning of February through the middle of March. To work as effectively as possible we need to raise $7777 by February 14th!
This money will go towards assisting in travel costs to get all of us to Carmen de Viborral, to pay for our shelter while we are there together and to assist in our production costs for costumes and props.
Other Ways You Can Help

Please help let people know about this project by putting it on your facebook wall, but signing up for our mass emails and by checking out our informational videos.